I recently had a conversation with a triathlete who will most likely be embarrassed to read this. I won’t mention any names or places. In the course of a ten minute conversation he used “negative self talk” so smoothly, so habitually, he’d given himself all the reasons why he couldn’t perform in a race.

He was totally unaware of consequences of the words coming out of his mouth. He was a nice, normal guy with no physical handicaps. He had the time to train, he had the equipment. Yet every conversation we had, he offered more reasons why he couldn’t be competitive.

Training at altitude is a tactic used by athletes in many sports to improve oxygen uptake. So when they return to sea level, they have a greater ability to absorb oxygen, and as a result can go further/faster than their competitors. Now the gains made by training at altitude are not huge, but they’ve been proven to be significant enough to make a difference.

Changing a “negative self talk” habit in an athlete could bring about a huge change in performance. Far greater than spending a couple of months at 5000ft.

It’s a natural thing to have self talk going on in our minds most of the time. One of the main benefits of meditation is to either silence, or at least control the self talk, so it’s not a distraction. The average athlete can gain a lot by just becoming aware of the self talk. 

The next step is to have some constructive self talk ready to run with, as soon as the negative stuff starts. If next time you make an excuse for not doing what you set out to do. The moment you feel yourself finding the excuse (excuses are simply reasons to fail) , turn on the empowering self talk.

Many of us have spent our lives coming up with all the “reasons to fail”, and not been aware of what we’re doing. It’s time to take responsibility for what happens. If you didn’t get the job done, I don’t want to hear the reasons why. I want to see action being taken to do it better next time. Not suceeding first time around is not failing.

Failing is accepting it as final and coming up with a reason why you can’t do it. Not suceeding is, gaining experience. Gaining experience makes a positive outcome much more likely next time we  go into the arena.

There’s a huge benefit to be gained by attempting something, which you may not be successful at on the first, or second, or third attempt. Each time you start the next attempt, you have more experience, and more detirmination.

When an athlete has lots of experience, lots of detirmination, and has felt the disapointment of several unsuccessful attempts. This is a formidable force to be faced by the opposition or the course to be conquered. The “I will not be beaten” attitude is the greatest assett an athlete can have.

Altitude can help, but attitude is the king.